Xbox and Office should drive Surface tablet marketing, but Steve Ballmer simply has no clue how to make Microsoft sexy.

I have always wondered why Apple ( AAPL) slums it by allowing Walmart ( WMT), Target ( TGT) and Best Buy ( BBY) to sell its premium products at all, let alone at a discount.

Amazon.com ( AMZN) makes slightly more sense given its dominant online presence. Plus, despite the media-driven meme of fierce competition between the two companies, I reckon Apple and Amazon have a partnership, even if it's unspoken or merely the result of a Steve Jobs-Jeff Bezos handshake.

In any event, it would be most excellent to get your hands on the broken down numbers: Apple product sales at Apple Stores, at Apple.com, at Amazon.com and at Walmart, Target and Best Buy. Good luck getting that data. Apple will never release it. And if a partner did, there would be trouble.

That said, I bet the numbers flatter Apple. They would also help explain why Microsoft's ( MSFT) retail strategy stinks.

But set aside the fact that Microsoft stores look like competitive spoofs designed by Apple itself. Even if Microsoft did something wholly original from a cosmetic standpoint, its retail strategy would still fail miserably.

It's worth paying an extra 5% or whatever to make your iPod, iPhone, iPad or Macbook purchase at an Apple Store. There's something to be said for paying for a trademark experience and excellent customer service before, during and after the sale.

People do this; in fact, I'm willing to bet that between physical and online, Apple sells, at minimum, 80% to 90% of its product by itself. Consumers no longer feel intimidated walking into an Apple Store; they feel welcome and, maybe more importantly, cool.

Over the weekend, I stopped by Microsoft's "pop-up" store in Times Square. There's nothing . . . good . . . to be said for that experience.

Relative to the Apple Store, this Microsoft outlet was void of bodies. At times, it got semi-crowded, however there was no steady flow. Mind you, it occupies a tiny space. Apple could never operate a store that small, pop-up or not, in a random city let alone Midtown Manhattan.